Many thanks to Russell Willems for putting together the audio for this session!
This is part I of a two part series, you can find part II here.
Aline Gubrium (U Mass-Amherst)
Exploring Reproductive Health through Digital Storytelling: A New Lens on Participant Observation
Digital storytelling is a technique used in community-based participatory action research that increases community members’ participation in studies of local community issues. In this presentation I look at the use of digital storytelling as a way to foreground women’s reproductive and sexual health experiences. By teaching women how to construct digital stories about their reproductive and sexual health experiences, I am seeking to use a narrative approach as a way to illuminate the complex circumstances that affect their own reproductive choices and experiences. I also note the ways that digital storytelling may elicit an alternative standpoint on participant experiences than might be expressed in an interview or focus group data collection methods
Jo Tacchi and Emma Baulch (Queensland U of Tech)
Digital Storytelling in South Asia and Indonesia: Developmentalism vs Alternative Visualities
This paper reports on findings from a research project called Finding a Voice, a collaboration with 15 UNESCO and UNDP-supported community ICT centers in South Asia and Indonesia. We are investigating the most effective ways of articulating information and communication networks (social and technological) to empower poor people to communicate their “voices” within marginalized communities. We are researching opportunities and constraints for local content creation. Twelve embedded researchers in the local centers are trained to bring an ethnographic perspective to their ICT center’s work – a perspective that is open to local meaning makings and contests Developmentalism’s authoritative claims to objectivity.
Zoe Clayson (San Francisco State U)
2006 Poder Popular Youth Digital Story
A team of Mexican-American youth from two rural agricultural communities in California produced a digital story by utilizing photos collected during a photovoice process and by synthesizing the input from community members and peers at the photovoice discussion sessions. Through our project we were able to engage youth in a way that was relevant to their life experiences. Their goals were to 1) share their perspective on their communities; 2) show youth contributions to positive changes; 3) change the image adults have of youth; and, 4) challenge community members to inspire them to get involved.
Krista Harper (U Mass-Amherst)
Across the Bridge: Using PhotoVoice to Investigate Environment and Health in a Hungarian Romani (Gypsy) Community
What does it mean when residents of the same town, citizens of the same country, live in quite different environmental conditions? The environmental justice frame problematizes this form of inequality and challenges the stereotype that poor people and members of minority groups do not care about the environment. I present findings from a recent research collaboration with a grassroots Romani (Gypsy) community organization in northern Hungary that used the PhotoVoice methodology to generate knowledge and documentation related to environment, health, and the dynamics of social exclusion and environmental inequalities.
Diane J. Schiano (Palo Alto Rsch Ctr)
Towards Technology Design with Seniors in Mind
Seniors are the fastest-growing segment of the population worldwide. Technology is required for participation in many of society’s functions these days, but it’s rarely designed with seniors in mind. This paper presents results from a broad-based, open-ended inquiry into issues around seniors’ experiences with technology. Interviews at a California senior activity center explored daily patterns of technology use, highlighting needs and interests, frustrations and delights. Extended observations focused on everyday patterns of practice in and around the center’s computer room. Some striking varieties of experiences and strong generational patterns suggest important issues on which ethnographic research can inform technology design.
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Session took place in Memphis, TN at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in March 2008.
